Thursday, October 23, 2008

So many people have been tagged in the last few days to write 7 random things about themselves and tag 7 others to do the same. I haven't (welcome to loserville), but I'm gonna go out on a wire here and say that I did just because I needed a starting point for a new entry. It's been a month. I hope everyone that comes across this page will do the same, since one of my favorite things on earth is learning about other people. So watch out blog-world, I'm about to go on a tagging spree!

1. I have a confession to make. I have become OBSESSED with photography and event planning blogs lately. Like, it's the last thing I do before bed and the first thing I do when I wake up (ok, after a few hits to the snooze button, brushing my teeth, and checking my email). One of my newest faves is http://www.hostessblog.com/. It's delicious. Makes me want to spend the rest of my life finding reasons to entertain friends and family with themed parties. Ho-hum.

2. I have a non-ossifying fibroma (also known as a fibrous cortical defect. huh?) in my right leg. That's code for really benign, unimportant tumor... until someone blasts you with a soccer cleat. two years in a row. and you spend your high school days being pushed around school in a wheelchair (thank you Emily Bailey, I am forever indebted to you) with a cast the length of your entire leg and pain more excruciating than giving birth to a dinosaur.

3. I've traveled to about 25 countries all over the world, but never been to Yosemite. Or the Grand Canyon. Or the local zoo for that matter.

4. I bit my nails for the first 24 years of my life. I look at photos of myself from a couple years ago and am repulsed that I carried on for as long as I did. But I guess that's why they call them bad habits.

5. All things aside, I have a pretty incredible job. It has brought me to have tea at Simplyummy with the Senator's wife in Winston-Salem, NC. It has taken me to meet with David Carey, publisher of Conde Naste, in his Times Square Plaza penthouse suite. It's brought me to Austin, Texas to watch the sunset at the famous Oasis and have breakfast burritos at the landmark Juan in a Million. My job has brought me to the First Lady's conference in Long Beach, CA, to hear the Dalai Lama speak on forgiveness. It's put me in the driver's seat of a Gulfstream jet for 130 miles somewhere between North Carolina and Orange County. And every day I get to hear about the incredible work being done for kids, and really, that just about does it for me.

6. I used to (and sometimes still do) collect thousands of quotes in quote journals - on subjects ranging from friendship to travel to life to love to judaism. Over the years, as some of the pages yellowed from spills and the corners of the book bent, i'd randomly open up one of my journals and find something written in a handwriting that's not mine, and have no idea whose contribution it was. To this day, it still drives me nuts, but I guess I'll never know. Regardless, I love it when I'm sitting there soaking up the brilliance in one of my Rabbi's sermons, and I can complete his sentences when he references a quote from one of my books.

7. In April 2000, I took two weeks out of my senior year in high school to travel to Poland and Israel on March of the Living. I spent a week as a witness to death, destruction and hate in the concentration camps, while hearing Holocaust survivors tell their haunting stories on long bus rides from camp to camp. Our second week in Israel celebrated life, hope, and Israeli Independence. I came back a mess. I cried for two weeks straight and couldn't even look at a flower without being reminded of gas chambers and Auschwitz. I skipped senior prom because I just couldn't deal with all the hype. The trip changed my life in innumerable ways and still, hardly a day goes by when I'm not reminded of the lessons that loom from it.